‘Directive … privileges lack of belief over belief’

Re: Forcing religious neutrality on CAF chaplains robs troops of support — Brian Dijkema, Aug. 5

The latest directive for Canadian Armed Forces chaplains privileges lack of belief over belief, even though both are equally protected and affirmed under the Charter. As much as CAF is correctly concerned about language that excludes non-believers, language that suppresses believers and belief must also be of concern.

My colleagues on both sides of the border are deeply committed to the men and women we serve. We are also deeply committed to our personal theologies. Requiring chaplains to sacrifice one in order to serve the other forces weighing our military training against our theological training.

I have offered dozens of prayers at retirements, changes of command, memorial services, prayer breakfasts, and while underway. At every turn, I have been both a rabbi and a United States Navy chaplain. My commanders, my Sailors, and my Marines did not call me to deliver an innocuous spiritual reflection. They called me because of the connections we developed. They called me because I held to a spiritual grounding. They called me because I was “the Chaps.”

Rav Sean Gorman, Toronto, LCDR, CHC, USN (Retired)

P.S. In accordance with my training, prayers always began with “please join me in MY prayer.” It was my prayer, not the command’s prayer. That language gave people a way not to participate. It freed people not to say amen.

Flypast for U.S. ambassador was a mistake

Re: Canadian military says it didn’t initiate July 4 flypast — U.S. ambassador requested it — David Pugliese, Aug. 6

Having two Canadian F-18 fighter jets fly with two American F-35s over the U.S. Ambassador’s residence in Ottawa on the Fourth of July, after all the insults hurled at Canada by the U.S. administration and after the U.S. Ambassador to Canada’s frequent clumsy and ill-informed attempts at diplomacy, only reinforced that the United States can do whatever it wants in relation to Canada, but whenever there is protest on Canada’s part the “glass jaw” of America becomes clearly evident.

In this case the Canadian military should have respectfully denied the Ambassador’s request for the flypast. It wouldn’t have created an international incident, but it would have reinforced the idea that Canada is a sovereign state, not a 51st state, and that the U.S. must respect this instead of requesting an unnecessary air show at Canada’s diplomatic and military expense simply to show off America’s fancy aircraft in an attempt to persuade Canada to favour its jets and not someone else’s.

Douglas Cornish, Ottawa

Pollution knows no borders

Re: ‘You’ll find out about it’: Trump hints at Canada’s wildfire smoke punishment — Ellie Hutchings, Aug. 4

Canada’s wildfire season is heartbreaking, and I understand why Americans are frustrated when smoke crosses the border. It is disappointing, however, to see an issue that once united our countries in co-operation become another political talking point.

We absolutely need to continue investing in wildfire prevention, forest management and firefighting. At the same time, climate change and increasingly severe fire seasons have made this an extraordinary challenge that no single country can solve alone.

What concerns me is the tone of some of the criticism coming from the United States. For generations, the U.S. has consumed substantially more fossil fuels than Canada in absolute terms and has historically relied heavily on coal-fired power. Those emissions, like wildfire smoke, do not stop at the border. Canadians have lived with cross-border air pollution for decades, yet our response has generally been to work together, not to point fingers.

The reality is that both coal combustion and wildfires release pollutants with health consequences. (Coal ash even contains naturally occurring radioactive elements.) Rather than trading accusations, we should be investing together in cleaner energy, healthier forests, and stronger emergency response.

Canada and the United States have always been better neighbours when we tackle shared problems together. Let’s get back to that.

Matt Halliday, Haileybury, Ont.

U.S. government also supports dairy industry

Re: Canada’s dairy sector is built on what I warn every client against — Daryl Ching, July 16

Daryl Ching has obviously valid points in his op-ed about the way dairy supply management raises the costs to the consumer by reducing competition. However to imply that the U.S. dairy industry is a free market governed totally by supply and demand is a laugh.

Canada does interfere with a full free market in dairy by quotas that limit supply in order to support Canadian farmers. It does increase the cost of dairy in Canada over what U.S. consumers pay.

The U.S. government however uses other means to support its dairy industry. It sets minimum prices paid by manufacturers to producers, it insures farmers from rising feed prices, it buys surplus dairy products and gives them to institutions or warehouses them, it subsidizes insurance premiums, and it supports export. This contributes to oversupply and what is in essence income supports for farmers. American farmers therefore have surplus production with which they want to flood the Canadian market.

This is a time when Canadians are wary of U.S. governmental interference in international trade. It is a time when the U.S. slaps protectionist tariffs without regard to international agreements and perhaps out of spite or to gain geopolitical advantage. It is a time when commercial interests in the U.S. are not shy in buying influence in Washington to promote their own wealth accretion. Is this the right time to take chances on destroying essential local food production and relying on the U.S. to provide us with essential food items?

Morris Sosnovitch, Toronto

When did Carney lose confidence in Infantino?

Re: Carney says he no longer has confidence in Gianni Infantino’s ability to run FIFA — Agence France-Presse, Aug. 5

As someone who lost confidence in Gianni Infantino the moment I learned he was president of the corruption-riddled FIFA, I would like to know when Prime Minister Mark Carney lost confidence in the man.

Was it when he learned the extortionate prices that FIFA decided to charge for seats at this year’s World Cup? Was it when, following a call from President Donald Trump to President Infantino, FIFA suspended the automatic one-game red-card suspension meted out to Folarin Balogun? Or was it really only when Carney learned Infantino might be about to sell a valuable part of the FIFA franchise to relatives of Trump that our prime minister felt confident enough to declare his loss of trust?

Maybe Carney actually believes that the three-strikes-you’re-out rule applies in football federations, too?

Patrick Cowan, North York, Ont.

Not an Anand admirer

Re: Anita Anand’s misguided condemnation of Israel — Alan Baker, Aug. 6

I cannot decide if former Israeli ambassador Alan Baker was being kind or disingenuous when he suggested that Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand was “misinformed” on the subject of so-called “settler violence.”

Anita Anand is not misinformed. There is plenty of information about what really occurred but the truth, to paraphrase Al Gore, is “inconvenient” for Minister Anand.

Anyone who does a deeper dive into the headlines knows that the Israeli farmers had plenty of provocation from the Palestinians, ranging from poisoning their animals to setting fire to their crops. Of course, the Israelis should not retaliate as they have done and should face justice for their actions. However they are no more guilty of wrongdoing than the Palestinian provocateurs, but Anand seems content to give the Palestinians a free pass, saving her vitriol for those pesky Jews.

Justin Trudeau, the self-styled “feminist” prime minister, booted Jody Wilson-Raybould from her position as attorney general, followed by health minister Jane Philpott, because Wilson-Raybould refused to break the law and shield SNC Lavalin from the consequences of its actions. Philpott supported her and thus also became the object of Trudeau’s wrath.

I admire both of these women for speaking truth to power and for refusing to engage in actions they knew to be wrong, even if it cost them. Not so Anand. She (and her predecessor in foreign affairs, Mélanie Joly), remained silent. One can only deduce from this, that political ambition outweighed honour.

Some pundits have suggested that Anand is the worst foreign affairs minister in Canadian history. It is easy to see why.

E. Joan O’Callaghan, Toronto

Federal government bonuses undeserved

Re: Federal government handed out $201.5M in bonuses to execs despite half of targets missed — Ellie Hutchings, July 31

Thanks to Ellie Hutchings for her excellent report based on findings by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF). How is it possible that 88 per cent of government executives received a bonus in 2025 when only 54 per cent of departments met their performance targets in 2024-2025?

These payments were categorized as either a (1) “bilingual bonus allowance” for 6,902 employees, at a cost of $4 million; (2) “at risk pay” totalling $172 million for 9,173 employees, or a (3) “performance award” for 1,618 costing $24 million. It is also worth noting that Canada Post handed out $30.8 million in management bonuses in 2025, despite losing $ 1.6 billion that year.

Prime Minister Mark Carney is not yet living up to his billing. And it’s highly unlikely Canadians will see a balanced budget under this Liberal government. The next generation will pay!

Harry K. Hocquard, King, Ont.

Stop the hate

Re: Antisemitic terrorism is a national emergency. Carney needs to act like it — Tasha Kheiriddin, Aug. 4

It would be inconceivable, intolerable and, I would hope, illegal for a group of Winnipeggers to stand outside an Islamic community centre, school or mosque carrying signs and shouting slogans depicting Muslims as garbage, diseased, and deliberate killers of children. Yet, like clockwork, during every Folklorama — an annual early-August celebration of this city’s cultural diversity — a group positions itself outside the Israeli pavilion at Rady Jewish Community Centre and does exactly this towards Jews.

The location of these purported anti-Israel protests underscores a popular pretence where “anti-Zionism” is misleadingly used as a placeholder for Jew hatred. How are protests about Israeli government actions served by attempting to intimidate families attending a Jewish community centre?

When societies allow for the dehumanization and vilification of a group of people, targeted violence is an inevitable outcome. Recent murders of Jewish individuals in Washington D.C.; Boulder, Colo., Manchester, England; and Bondi Beach, Australia, and attacks on Jewish-owned businesses and places of worship in Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver and Winnipeg were not random events.

A dangerous culture of tolerance for hatred towards Jewish people has grown over the past three years. It has to stop.

Daniel Rothman, Winnipeg

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